A Better Man
by Kat Lee formerly Pirate Turner
Summary: He finally denied his mother's voice. Ghosts of the Confederacy snippet.


Title: "A Better Man"  
Author: Kat Lee  
Rating: G  
Summary: He finally denied his mother's voice.  
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, names, codenames, places, items, fandoms, titles, and etc. are always © & TM their respective owners, not the author, and are used without permission. Any and all original characters and everything else is © & TM the author and may not be reproduced in any way without the author's express, written permission. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.  
Author's Note: 244. That's the number of stories that were sitting on my hard drive collecting dust because I lack the energy and time to take care of them as I once did. My betaing pattern has always been to write, then type up if written on paper, the story, read it aloud to my beloved Jack and our children, editing as I go, and then finally format and post. Sadly, this part is simply taking too much of my time and energy, and my beloved Jack and I have too little time together in person these days to be able to keep up with my stories. So what to do? Give up writing? I actually considered it for a while, tried to make excuses to myself other than the large number of stories collecting cyber dust on my computer, as to why I lacked the energy and Muse to write new tales. And then, with the turn of the new year, I decided to stop running and face the problem. The problem is, quite frankly, that once one gets so bogged down in formatting and editing that writing is no longer a pleasure but the actual posting of those writings becomes a hassle and - egad! - work, it's time to cut something out, and that will never be the writing process. So, in short, yes, there will be mistakes in this tale. Yes, it's missing about half of the header information I usually include. But I wrote it for pleasure and am posting it in hopes of sharing that pleasure with others. Do with it as you will.

They said he was selfish from the moment he rode into town in his fine suit. One look at the gentleman gambler from common eyes told them that he was far too wealthy to be concerned with their type of folk. He gambled in the saloon, taking money from those who didn't truly have it to spend and those who had more copper than brains, while keeping to himself and ignoring the looks that came his way from the more gentile people in the town.

He'd been receiving such looks from the time when he was a little boy, taken in to the saloons with his mother to serve as a distraction to the men who were simultaneously trying to beat Maude Standish at cards and win her heart. Neither could be done, Ezra knew. She was the best card shark in the West, and she had eyes and concern for only one, just as she'd taught him to do.

There wasn't a moment of any game or even a single day that went by that Ezra didn't hear his mother's voice in his head, chiding him for what he did wrong and clucking over him when he bothered to do right, which was even worse in her eyes. She had never concerned herself with him because of himself, Ezra knew, but rather because he was of her flesh and blood and, thereby, representative of her. Rather what he did made her look bad or good was all Maude cared about when it came to him, and she cared even less about the rest of the world around him.

Ezra had tried hard to adopt his mother's outlook on life. He had almost succeeded until he came to this small, dusty town in the middle of nowhere and found himself joining up with six other men who rarely, if ever, thought of themselves first. They faced impossible odds together, and Ezra knew he'd died with them if he didn't leave. He knew his death was imminent if he stayed, so he left.

He ran like the coward his mother had taught him to be, taking gold with him and knowing she'd be proud of him at last. But Ezra wasn't proud of himself. He'd gone maybe a mile or two, at most, when the conscience he'd ran from his entire life, the conscience Maude had done everything in her power to beat and scold into submission, finally caught up to him, and despite everything he'd been told, and all he'd learned whenever he'd tried to do good, Ezra Standish turned back.

He turned back. He laid his life on the line. He saved others, and at last, there were six men who, despite everything they said and the cold, hard looks they gave him for abandoning them in the first place, knew the gambler wasn't as selfish as he pretended. They knew he wasn't the man he claimed to be but a better man, a man who was a hero, despite being dark, marked, and told never to be, and soon, there'd be an entire village, and a town, too, who knew the same thing.

**The End**


End file.
